


ye who are weary

by orphan_account



Category: Justified
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-07
Updated: 2013-08-07
Packaged: 2017-12-22 16:31:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 717
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/915464
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Come home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	ye who are weary

Arlo’s got a rattling cough on the morning Raylan starts work down the mines. Not that Raylan would know, he left that house a year ago, but Helen sees him picking up pink coconut sno-balls at the Kroger station and gives him a disapproving look, and tries to catch him up.

  
“I hope you ate real breakfast, Raylan,” she says, and he smiles at her, dips his head in what somebody who wasn’t Helen would think was deference. He pleads tardiness when she brings up his daddy and runs by strolling.

  
He’s heard that Arlo’s got a meeting set up with some lesser White from Boone County, and a couple bikers from farther south. He doesn’t want to know.

  
The boys down at the mine are familiar, he knows them, yeah, he knows them, they’ve always been around. Jurl Bouchard folds his slab of beef arms across his chest and stares Raylan down like he’s owed something. Boyd Crowder looks up from where he’s slumped on folded elbows and grins.

  
It smells like shit down in the hole.

  
Boyd snaps his teeth at girls who won’t give him the time of day. Every couple of hours his grandiose plans change. He spins arabesques like Arlo. Boyd pushes Raylan out of the way and climbs all the way down, affects violent and necessary change in the dark, a flash and a stink and a sound that will shake your membranes.

  
Yeah, Raylan thinks, blow it to pieces.

  
It’s five fifteen on the very first day when Boyd reaches into his truck, pulls out a bottle of Pappy van Winkle and waves it in Raylan’s face.

  
“How in the hell did you get your hands on that?” Raylan says.

  
“Took it off a supply truck stopped at the gas station.”

  
They get drunk with their backs propped in the rotting leaves as the sun thinks about setting. The trees are green and baby new, and the open door of Boyd’s truck lets Hank and Emmylou and Skeeter and Merle and for some godawful reason Thin Lizzy wash over them.

  
Won’t be long til summer comes.

  
Most days after work Boyd goads him until he climbs into the truck and lets Boyd drive them out to the middle of some holler. They drink until it’s not weird and Boyd gets poetic and says

  
“We are talking long strings to wrap up around ourselves and keep anything from falling off, don’t you see. That’s what the beer is for.”

  
Raylan rolls his eyes and makes tiny little scoffs and says, “Do you even know how ridiculous you sound.”

  
Boyd hums.

  
“What’s Arlo up to?” he asks

  
Instead of punching him Raylan feels the loose liquor warmth in his shoulders and says “Who knows? Who cares?”

  
In August, induced seismicity takes out some lower strata just above Raylan’s head. Boyd’s fingernails leave bloody lines in Raylan’s wrist when he drags him up and pulls him through the retreat.

  
The feeling Raylan gets at the first glimpse of the sun up the shaft is very similar to the deep conviction that he will never, ever, no matter how hard he tries, forget all of the lyrics to Softly and Tenderly Jesus is Calling.

  
That night they sit by a flat-topped hunk of granite that must have housed someone’s grandfather’s still, years ago, and Boyd says very quietly that he thinks he will join the army.

If there is anything else in his eyes besides the dizziness of still being alive, well, Raylan’s too drunk to see it. And if, when Boyd leans forward, Raylan meets him half-way and throws an arm around his neck, bringing them down in a sweaty grime tangle, well, he doesn’t remember it.

  
In a week Boyd is gone, to MEPS and then to Basic, and in a couple more days, Raylan is too, filling his car with dollar eight gas and driving west until the land gets flat and the horses get fine.

  
Years later Raylan is hauling a prisoner through Shamrock Texas and he thinks he sees him, elbows propped on the passenger side window sill of an old Chevy, staring up and blinking the sun into submission. It’s just some kid though, spitting Copenhagen refuse on the pavement. He doesn’t think of Boyd Crowder after that.


End file.
